December 05, 2011

Santo Elected to Hall, a Year Too Late to Enjoy

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

Ron Santo was beloved by Cubs fans but not by the Hall of Fame, until Monday.

Santo, a Chicago Cubs third baseman in the 1960s and early ’70s, was the only candidate chosen by the Golden Era Committee, receiving 15 of its 16 votes on Sunday’s ballot.
“We dared to dream this,” said Santo’s widow, Vicki, during a conference call with reporters.
Jim Kaat finished second with 10 of the required 12 votes, followed by Gil Hodges and Minnie Minoso with 9 votes, and Tony Oliva with 8.
“I just believe this was meant to be,” Vicki Santo said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in his lifetime.”
She said that her husband had been disappointed by the times when baseball writers and the Hall’s Veterans Committee did not vote him in. But, she added, “When his number was retired at Wrigley Field and he stood before 40,000 people and said, ‘This is my Hall of Fame,’ he really meant that.”
Santo will join three Cubs teammates in the Hall: Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins and Billy Williams. She spoke to one of them shortly after hearing the news of her husband’s election.
“When Billy Williams got on the phone and said, ‘We finally got it done,’ I just cried,” she said.
Over 15 seasons, including one with the White Sox, Santo hit 342 home runs, had a batting average of .277, won five Gold Gloves and was named to nine All-Star teams.
He followed his playing career with 19 seasons as a beloved Cubs announcer who bore emotional witness to the continuing frustrations of a team that has not won the World Series since 1908.
Santo, who died Dec. 3, 2010, at age 70, had juvenile diabetes, a disease that contributed to heart attacks, heart-bypass surgery, eye operations and the amputations of his legs. He raised millions of dollars for diabetes research.

In 2008, he told The New York Times: “Until adversity hits you, and I had open heart surgery and lost both my legs, you think, I can’t get through it. But really, you do what you have to do. I say that to everybody. You have only one way to go, and that’s a positive way.”
In Hall of Fame voting by baseball writers, Santo never got more than 43.1 percent of the vote. In 2008 he fell nine votes short of the 48 required for election by the Veterans Committee, which had considered candidates whose careers began after 1942.
Reflecting on falling short of a Veterans Committee vote, he told The Times, “I’m getting older and I don’t have that time, and with diabetes — I mean, I’m not worried about it, but, you know, I want to be here when it happens, if it does.”

Asked what her husband’s reaction would have been if he had lived to see his election to the Hall, Vicki Santo said: “I can see him sitting on the sofa here, pumping his fist in the air, saying, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ with the same enthusiasm he had as a player and as a broadcaster when a home run was hit.”
The Golden Era Committee considered those candidates whose contributions were most significant from 1947 to 1972. In addition to Kaat, Hodges, Minoso and Oliva failing to get enough votes, the former Yankees pitcher Allie Reynolds received fewer than three, as did Ken Boyer, Luis Tiant and the executives Buzzie Bavasi and Charlie Finley.